This ‘Groove happily welcomed a wonderful surprise guest!
On February 18 NASA’s Perseverance Rover landed on Mars with a mission to search for extinct life. This massive human achievement happened in the middle our current horrors, the global pandemic, strange divisive political movements, and natural disasters, including the Texas snow that shut down their power grid leaving people without warmth or water. The Rover landing was one thing everyone across the world, and especially here in the U.S., could all celebrate and enjoy, a moment of awe and success.
I name the ‘Grooves and choose a picture to promote them on Facebook to reference what is happening that week, somewhat randomly, pulling something out of the news or the current gestalt that catches my eye, with not too much thought. There were a few things I thought of using to base the name, last week’s Valentine’s Day Sunday (which was among the only, if not the only skipped week since I took it off for a brief Birthday week vacation for myself), winter’s depth, maybe Cruz’s ridiculous escape to Cancun to escape the terrible power failures happening in Texas, and of course, the Rover, which I ultimately chose because it’s a bit of a happy thing. And I’m really glad I did, since one of our regulars took our titled ‘Groove as an excuse to reach out to a high school friend of hers who actually works for NASA and worked on the Rover landing! Although they hadn’t been in touch since high school, he generously agreed, last minute, to speak to our group, a total surprise, popping in as we were happening. I sort of wish I’d known before the Zoom so I could have promoted his talk and had a bigger audience for him, but he was happy to have a small group, as technically he’s not supposed to speak publicly, especially the night before the videos of the landing were released to the press. I won’t share his name except to say he was a charming, handsome, and brilliant guy who was super generous to speak to us for close to two hours and answer every question, small and large, in detail and with patience and humor.
Our NASA friend works out of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at CalTech. He shared that he was a member of the team called Entry, Descent & Landing, “EDL.” This meant his expertise was focused on the seven minutes between the time the Rover entered the Mars atmosphere and landed on the planet. He was particularly interested in how the dust would interact with the parachute as it opened, as revealed by the newly released videos which he of course watched, and the rest of the world would have to wait for until the next day to see. He said he worked for eight years on those seven minutes, and what is absolutely amazing is the last year, that is this past one immediately prior to the launch, the entire team worked remotely because of the pandemic. And yet they were still able to successfully launch and land the spacecraft, and even with the further complication of an earthquake July 20, 2020 in Pasadena, California, where the NASA mission control center is located, as the Rover launched from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
He explained that Mars has one third the gravity than that on earth and thin air, cold, with below zero temperatures. They don’t know if the planet is inhabitable now, but it may have been which, is why they are looking for microbes and other life that may be earth-ish. He explained that the location of the landing is an ancient lake bed, and was selected because this would be where microbes would be most likely found. The ancient river and lake was bordered by a cliff and the strata, the stripes of dirt, in the cliff would have fossils of different ages, or maybe not at all, but it was worth looking at in hope that there were. He explained how the cache of samples the Rover might find would be collected into sample tubes and then another smaller Rover would be sent to pick them up and take them back. He explained that the selection of the site came out of a bit of a contest among the NASA Rover team members where they took turns pitching the best idea for a landing site. Interestingly several countries are sending Mars explorations now, China, Russia, the UAE, because of a rare opportunity weather wise on Mars, and he said that the scientists from the different countries were rooting for each other, helping each other out in the name of science, which, in these divisive times, was pretty nice to hear. He told us how they were very careful to clean the craft so that we didn’t bring viruses or bacteria to Mars, like we destroyed so many aboriginal animals and cultures in the past. He said they built a Deep Space Network of antenna for communication, but even though it is large and sophisticated, once a little insect sat in the wrong place and brought them alldown. He said the landing site was filled with rocks and silt, and some parts of the planet were easier to land on than others. Information coming back is delayed, charged particles flying around could mess that up.
We asked what they did to celebrate the success of the landing and he said the team ordered in sushi and ate it together from their Zoom boxes. From after the landing they handed it off to the Surface Team which handles the driving and planning . The Rover will continue sending information as long as its able, weather conditions affect how long that will be. Global dust storms took out a previous Rover. We asked if they were looking for non carbon life forms, and he said sure, who knows, they’re open to finding anything they can. All very cool, and all very lucky we got to talk to him about this really fantastic achievement.
